From Russia with private point of view by Gregory Tinsky

Thursday, July 19, 2012

It was
American economist Richard Florida, who coined the term “creative class”. He
described the phenomenon in his “Rise of the Creative Class”. Strategy-2020 by
Vladimir Putin has introduced the term to Russian political science and
economics. According to authors, it is the creative class that bears the
innovative thinking and the entrepreneurship spirit. The hopes for the timely
modernization are still pinned to it — deprived of that, Russia is destined to
become yet another “third world” country.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Annual economic forum in St. Petersburg — pretentiously dubbed the “Russian
Davos” — has come to an end. Neither its significance for the global economics,
nor the ranks of the guests, nor the announced goals can match the Swiss ones,
but peculiar aspects of it are crucial for our country.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

“Responding to the
election of neo-Nazi MPs to the Greek parliament we proclaim in solidarity:
‘Each of us is a Greek Jew!’” We cannot reconcile with the fact that in Greece
or any other country of our continent Gypsies or those of African descent have
to fear for their very lives because of the sheer fact of being themselves”, —
says the letter of European intellectuals,published by several European newspapers. An occasion for such
precaution was the Greek parliament elections, which took place on the May 6,
this year. For the first time in the history an orthodox national-socialist party
of Greece (Hrisi Avgi, which means Golden Dawn) got into the parliament with a
result of 6.97%. Party holds Mein Kampf for the ideology, its logo looks
suspiciously like swastika, party member greet each other with a notorious
“Sieg”, only “Aryans by blood and Greeks by nationality” may be its members —
and there goes all the appropriate Nazi bric-a-brac.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Recent proposal by
Vsevolod Chaplin to impose a “church tithe” in Russia caused more smiles than to
protests, which have become the natural reaction to the initiatives of the
Russian Orthodox Church chief PR-executive of late. Comments regarding the
occasion may be reduced to a simple thesis that “we are about to find out the
real number of true believers in Russia”. Having smiled with everyone else, I
decided to peek at our European neighbors in order to understand how the
educated European Union funds its churches (of which there are aplenty). Here I
would like to share the results of my research with the progressive
public.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Sheer amount of reforms, which the current Hungarian government is engaged
into, and, most of all, the volume of reformed economic and political
institutions is unprecedented. Apart from Prime Minister Viktor Orban, no one,
not even the members of his own government, seem to be aware of the complicated
situation, which Hungary fetched itself in. The government is under tremendous
pressure exerted by the international institutions. Orban awaits the IMF
decision regarding the loan for Hungary with the strained attention — this loan
may give the markets a positive signal.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

About a week ago timid rumors about a failed coup in
one of the most outstanding Arab states — Qatar — leaked to the outskirts of
global information space. Its population is of match to a population of Udmurt
Republic (federal subject of Russia) and makes about 1.700.000, but of late it
has been laying claims for leadership within the renovated Gulf Cooperation
Council, ousting the authority of Saudi Arabia.